Naturalism

This inaugural Interventions volume introduces readers to the dominant scientifically oriented worldview called naturalism. Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro examine naturalism philosophically, evaluating its strengths and weaknesses. Whereas most other books on naturalism are written for professional philosophers alone, this one is aimed primarily at a college-educated audience interested in learning about this pervasive worldview. Read a related blog post by the authors on EerdWord.

Many contemporary Anglo-American philosophers describe themselves as naturalists. But what do they mean by that term? Popular naturalist slogans like, "there is no first philosophy" or "philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences" are far from illuminating. "Understanding Naturalism" provides a clear and readable survey of the main strands in recent naturalist thought. The origin and development of naturalist ideas in epistemology, metaphysics and semantics is explained through the works of Quine, Goldman, Kuhn, Chalmers, Papineau, Millikan and others. The most common objections to the naturalist project - that it involves a change of subject and fails to engage with "real" philosophical problems, that it is self-refuting, and that naturalism cannot deal with normative notions like truth, justification and meaning - are all discussed. "Understanding Naturalism" distinguishes two strands of naturalist thinking - the constructive and the deflationary - and explains how this distinction can invigorate naturalism and the future of philosophical research.

Presenting a revisionary reading of German, Canadian, and American texts such as Fanny Essler, Settlers of the Marsh, and Sister Carrie, Gammel (English, U. of Prince Edward Island) attributes to naturalism, a predominantly male genre, the appropriation of a disruptive female sexuality not so much to "liberate" it from Victorian repression as to contain it within the male boundaries of naturalism. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Is the world just a cultural construct where people create their own realities? In this illuminating and wide-ranging philosophical treatise, Brian Morris critiques broad swathes of recent theory as he seeks to reclaim anthropology as a historical social science. He achieves this by grounding it within a metaphysic of "dialectical naturalism" or "evolutionary realism"--a tradition long ignored by academic philosophy. After reviewing the anthropological background of this worldview--the Greeks and the Enlightenment--Morris explores two essential themes. First, he critically assesses the main forms of dialectical naturalism, including Darwin's evolutionary theory, Marx's historical materialism, and the hylo-realism of the philosopher-scientist Mario Bunge. Second, he offers a strong plea to retain the dual heritage of anthropology as a historical science that combines both humanism and naturalism. A powerful philosophical manifesto, the book cogently upholds dialectical naturalism as the most grounding philosophy for anthropology and the social sciences.

First published in 1971, this book examines the literary style of Naturalism. After introducing the reader to the term itself, including its history and its relationship to Realism, it goes on to trace the origins of the Naturalist movement as well as particular groups which adhered to Naturalism and the theories they espoused. It also provides a summary of the key Naturalist literary works and concludes which a brief reflection on the movement as a whole. This book will be of interest to those studying nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature.

Naturalism provides a rigorous analysis and critique of the major varieties of contemporary philosophical naturalism. The authors advocate the thesis that contemporary naturalism should be abandoned, in light of the serious objections raised against it. Contributors draw on a wide range of topics including: epistemology, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind and agency, and natural theology.

The components of living systems strike us as functional-as for the sake of certain ends—and as endowed with specific norms of performance. The mammalian eye, for example, has the function of perceiving and processing light, and possession of this property tempts us to claim that token eyes are supposed to perceive and process light. That is, we tend to evaluate the performance of token eyes against the norm described in the attributed functional property. Hence the norms of nature. What, then, are the norms of nature? Whence do they arise? Out of what natural properties or relations are they constituted? In Norms of Nature, Paul Sheldon Davies argues against the prevailing view that natural norms are constituted out of some form of historical success—usually success in natural selection. He defends the view that functions are nothing more than effects that contribute to the exercise of some more general systemic capacity. Natural functions exist insofar as the components of natural systems contribute to the exercise of systemic capacities. This is so irrespective of the system's history. Even if the mammalian eye had never been selected for, it would have the function of perceiving and processing light, because those are the effects that contribute to the exercise of the visual system. The systemic approach to conceptualizing natural norms, claims Davies, is superior to the historical approach in several important ways. Especially significant is that it helps us understand how the attribution of functions within the life sciences coheres with the methods and ontology of the natural sciences generally.

Richard J. Bernstein argues that despite the apparent chaotic debates about naturalism, there has recently been a series of powerful arguments that support a version of naturalism that is in the spirit of John Dewey’s pragmatic naturalism. After presenting a sketch of Dewey’s pragmatic naturalism, he critically examines the works of a variety of thinkers—Robert Brandom, John McDowell, Richard Rorty, Wilfrid Sellars, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Philip Kitcher, Bjorn Ramberg, David Macarthur, Steven Levine, Mark Johnson, Robert Sinclair, Huw Price, and Joseph Rouse—to show how they have contributed analytic finesse to the articulation of Dewey’s vision of pragmatic naturalism. As Bernstein shows, Dewey’s philosophical legacy is very much alive today in some of the best recent philosophic discussions.